Headspace
by Threepwillow
Summary: Jumping straight into his next case like this leaves Yusuke desperate for a little more freedom inside his own head. :::YusukexKuwabara, sequel to Sleeptalking, ignoring the final arc woohoo::: NOW COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

(A/N: Okay, so Racereff and I just MARATHON'D season 2 of this show – I'm not kidding, we did it all in one night. It kind of felt like doing drugs. At any rate, that finally kickstarted me into writing this thing. It comes pretty immediately after Sleeptalking, so read that one first!)

**Headspace, pt 1**

Had class _always_ been this boring?

Or did it just seem incredibly dull by comparison after all the shit he'd done as spirit detective?

Yusuke was starting to think that it actually _was_ the former, at the rate Ms. Hijiri's monotone voice was putting him to sleep. No, there was no way that algebra had ever been interesting. If it weren't for the fact that he had all this damn paperwork to fill out, he'd have passed out already.

Of course, that didn't mean the paperwork was interesting either. Despite how quickly it had been resolved, his latest case had left a bunch of strings. Yusuke had gone up against a giant bug-demon creep called the Dream Lord, who had a nasty habit of trapping people in his dream realm and forcing them to experience eternal torment. When he and Kuwabara had escaped, they hadn't realized it was going to be on them to crawl back into the dream realm and free a ton of other people. Yusuke hadn't even realized they were there at all. It had been up to Kuwabara, who had sensed all of them as low-level _demons_ rather than human beings due to the dream realm's weird ass-backward aftereffects. Once freed, the random people showered praise onto the two of them, thanking them for their salvation. Kuwabara ate it up, but Yusuke was already sick of the case, and he just wanted to go home. He had better things to do.

He and Kuwabara had better things to do.

As he sat there scratching Xs through little check-boxes and filling out disinterested, one-word responses to all the standard mumbo-jumbo post-case questions, Yusuke tried very hard not to think about the _other_ stuff that had happened in the dream realm and afterward. Because if he got to thinking about it now, it wouldn't go away. There would be a constant buzz in the back of his mind - and a faint ache in the back of his throat - and the only cure for it would be a stupid guy with stupid orange hair and a stupid spirit sword and a stupid, sexy way of kissing the hell out of him...

"Urameshi?"

Shit. It was too late. The buzz was already there, and the cure was three classrooms away. And now Ms. Hijiri had called on him and he absolutely, positively did _not_ have any idea what they were talking about.

Yusuke squinted at the chalkboard from his position at the back of the room, trying to nonchalantly shove his spirit world paperwork out of sight as he did so and act like he'd actually been following along. He could trace the problem up until the second step, but from the third part onward he was totally lost. Ultimately, the only answer that would come out of his mouth was "Two out of three?"

"Were we actually discussing odds and statistics, Urameshi, I have no doubt that your answer might at least be a relevant one, if not the correct one. However, these are polynomials, and while I can see how you would be disinterested, as they have nothing to do with _gambling_, I would pay attention if I were you. Heaven forbid you actually _learn_ something."

One kid in the front of the room had the gall to laugh at him. Yusuke glared up at the punk, making sure he memorized his face so he could beat him up later. He shut up pretty quickly, jumping a little and turning to face the front again. Yusuke scowled, mumbling a little bit to himself, and pulled out his paperwork again. He was desperate to finish it before the buzz got too bad.

Of course, it was easy to find the question he'd left off at, because it was a scale question, and he'd circled _2 out of 3_.

Suddenly, worse than he'd felt it all day, Yusuke couldn't _wait_ for this day to be over. Everyone always said how much they hated Mondays, but Yusuke thought that Fridays were pretty horrible too, because you had to sit there and anticipate the weekend all freaking day. And what he needed more than anything right now was a weekend, some time to chill. If he skipped any more class except for the strictest emergencies (also known as spirit detective cases) he was screwed, and he'd end up failing this year. He couldn't afford to just take off in the middle of the week, as much as he wanted to. So instead, everything had been building up. The classwork. The casework. That damn _buzz_. Yusuke just didn't know how he had enough room left in his head for all of it.

When the bell rang, Yusuke collected up all of his stuff as best he could, shoved it into his schoolbag, and bolted from the school. He wasn't going home - the buzz had guaranteed that - but he just needed to get out.

He did stop long enough to beat the snot out of that kid from math, though.

-xxx-

Okay, it was official: Yusuke hated Fridays. And he _especially_ hated today.

He poured on the speed all the way to Kuwabara's house, racing against the buzz in his head. By the time he got there he was hot and sweating from exertion, so he squirmed out of his uniform jacket and paused for a minute to catch his breath before he rang the doorbell. As he heard feet shuffling to the door, he started to grin...

And then the person that opened the door was Kuwabara's sister.

Yusuke stuttered, trying to cover his frustration and still be polite. "Oh, uh, hey Shizuru..."

"Bro's not home yet, Urameshi," she said with a hint of apology. "Remember? He got that detention for fighting? I'm amazed you managed to escape it."

"Oh yeah," said Yusuke, recalling it suddenly - though honestly, it was no wonder he'd forgotten. Then something else occurred to him. "Hey, what are you doing here anyway? Don't you have to work?"

"Fridays are only half-days now," said Shizuru with a smile. "They changed the office hours. It's nice to have an afternoon a week to sit at home and not have to go anywhere."

"Uh-huh. Nice," said Yusuke faintly. Damnit! If she was gonna be here... "Tell you what, when Kuwabara gets home, can you just tell him to come over to my place instead? Tell him I uh...I got that new tape that he wanted to listen to."

"Okay, sure," said Shizuru. "I guess I'll see you later?"

"See ya," Yusuke said, and then he turned and headed home.

He couldn't remember the last time half an hour had taken so long. He had planned on chatting to his mom a little, as a distraction, but when he got home she wasn't there. Yusuke couldn't decide if he thought this was a good thing or a bad thing. Instead he shut himself in his room, prepared to just space out until Kuwabara came around, but the ticking of his clock was too loud and along with the buzz, he figured he'd probably crack. So he prowled around the kitchen, got a snack, fidgeted, talked a bit to his mom when she finally got home, and was just deciding to sit in his room after all and throw the damn clock in his sock drawer when there was a knock at the door.

"Oh, hey there!"

"Hi, uh, Urameshi's mom. He's here, right?"

"Sure, sure, come on in! He's in his room, I think." Yusuke was impressed with her keeping her voice relatively steady, drunk as she was. He sat on his bed and braced himself for the buzzing to stop.

Kuwabara walked in. "Hey, Urameshi," he said with a bit of a smirk as he shut the door behind him.

"Hey yourself," said Yusuke.

"So..." Kuwabara said, stepping closer to him. "You have that tape I want to listen to, huh?"

"Yeah, I got your tape."

"So where is it?"

"It's right here." Yusuke pointed vaguely in his own direction.

"Where?" asked Kuwabara, closing the distance between them even more. "I don't see it."

"Closer," said Yusuke, "closer..._here_!"

Kuwabara had finally gotten close enough for Yusuke to reach around to the back of his head and pull their lips together, for the smallest fleetingest kiss first before diving completely in. The mouth he was kissing was smiling at him, laughing into his own, but kissing back pretty solidly once things got going. As they became more engaged, as Kuwabara pushed him further back and further down onto the bed, Yusuke started to realize that the buzz wasn't really going away - it was just turning from a bad buzz to a good buzz. He felt like he could work with that, especially if it meant Kuwabara would keep kissing him like _that_. The pressure of Kuwabara's tongue against his own was sweet, insistent, in a way that had made Yusuke give up worrying about Kuwabara's Y chromosome a long time ago.

At least when it came to the two of them and the kissing part. When it came to the "telling other people" part, neither Yusuke nor Kuwabara had been too enthused. Yusuke was pretty sure that it was not okay to like other guys. Sometimes he would almost come to terms with it - after all, he didn't really like _guys_, he just liked _a_ guy - but then he'd see a couple (a _boy/girl_ couple) holding hands in the halls at school, or catch his mom hanging out with her gross drag-queen friends, and the whole process would be reversed. And clamming up was hard for Yusuke - though conveniently, the upside to secretly making out with your best friend sometimes was that you didn't have to keep it a secret from your best friend - but he just didn't think the time was right. And he didn't know if it ever would be.

Of course, the time _was_ right for actually doing the secret making out.

"Mmf, Urameshi," Kuwabara murmured, nudging at him. He'd slackened up a little lost in thought about stupid shit. Kuwabara's hand curving around the side of his ribcage snapped him back to reality, and he leaned into the touch and started kissing back _hard_ again. Even after ten minutes or so Kuwabara wasn't losing steam, and every second was awesome. _Shit_, thought Yusuke, _I think I had a dream like this once..._

However, his dream definitely didn't include Kuwabara suddenly tensing up, opening his eyes and freezing motionless.

"Hey, whassa - "

"Sorry!" hissed Kuwabara, which didn't make a lot of sense, but then he socked Yusuke in the jaw and it started to add up.

"What the hell are you doing, dumbass?" Yusuke cried, and just about had Kuwabara in a headlock when Botan popped through the door.

She eyed them skeptically. "You know I'm glad to have caught both of you at once, but I certainly hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Oh, no, Urameshi here just felt the need to exert his masculinity over a dumb argument, nothing new." Kuwabara squirmed out from under his arm while Yusuke was still dumbstruck. "Man, I told you that tape was gonna suck."

Something finally clicked and Yusuke managed to fumble out a response just in time to keep Botan from getting _too_ suspicious. "I think it's your tastes in music that suck, pal."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Do the two of you ever resolve anything without resorting to your fists?"

Yusuke and Kuwabara didn't even look at each other before answering in tandem. "Nope."

"Ugh, _boys_."

"So hey now, what are you doing here anyway?" Yusuke asked Botan. "I'm not quite done with that paperwork yet, if that's what you're here for - "

Botan instantly looked sheepish. "Ahh, not _exactly_. Although if you could have it for me soon that'd be great."

"Oh yeah?" Yusuke raised one eyebrow. Why did he already not like the sounds of this?

"Yeah, because, ah...what I really stopped by for was to prepare you for your next case." She squeaked the last couple of phrases out rather quickly and was already wincing.

"Damnit, _already_?"

"Well, sometimes the crimes you have to go up against aren't perpetrated at times that are convenient to _you_, Yusuke!"

"Hey, if I recall correctly, the last crap I had to go through wasn't even a real case - it was just, oh, a _threat on my life_!"

"Uh, no offense, Urameshi, but a lot of the stuff you do threatens your life and you usually don't take it all that seriously," Kuwabara piped up. Botan nodded emphatically.

"Damnit, Kuwabara, you're supposed to be on my side." He glared, and Kuwabara glared back, and the back of his head went _buzz_.

"At any rate, don't take your issues up with me," said Botan. "Take them up with Kouji and Jikou, the twin brother and sister that dug up the Great Swan's Tooth and plan to use it for their own purposes."

"Swan's tooth?" echoed Kuwabara. "Hey, swans are birds, they don't have teeth!"

"Not any more," Botan agreed. "And certainly not in the human world. But a long time ago, the Great Swan became infected with a terrible poison. One of the side effects was that all its teeth fell out. Of course, the teeth were just as infected as the rest of the swan, so the poison was contained within them. All but one of them was destroyed. King Enma used the last one as a deterrent for a forest full of crazed demonic trees. By burying it in the soil in the center of the forest, the poison spread into the ground and kept them all from growing."

"So lemme guess, I have to get back this poison bird tooth thing?" said Yusuke, unimpressed.

"Bingo," said Botan. "The forest is under control - we've sent Kurama to deal with that, as you might expect - but it's up to you to track down the twins and get the Great Swan's Tooth back before they destroy entire cities with it!"

"Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if they're just terrorizing the demon realm, isn't that okay? How does this affect me at all?"

"The demon realm is used to small skirmishes, it's true, but any sort of widespread unrest could have repercussions on spirit world and the human world as well," explained Botan. "Especially if it's to the scale that these two intend it."

"What scale is that?" asked Kuwabara.

"Genocide."

"Geez, really?"

"Really. Kouji and Jikou are the last of their kind, after a long-standing clan feud turned into a large-scale war. They intend to use the tooth to exact revenge on the rival clan for what they did. Unfortunately, that's one of the biggest clans in the demon realm right now, and if they were to use the poison on all of them..."

"Shit would go down. Yeah, I hear you," said Yusuke.

"Then you'll do it?"

"Do I really have much of a choice?"

"Well, no, I guess not. Well, good! Then there's absolutely no backing out now!"

Yusuke's eyes narrowed. "This is the part where you're gonna tell me I have to do something really _stupid_, isn't it?"

"Ahaha, well, stupid isn't _exactly_ the word I'd use - "

"Spit it out, Botan," he growled. "Might as well get it over with."

"Well, you see, Kouji and Jikou's clan was known for two specific traits that they possess, to a degree that's probably higher than any other type of demon. First of all, they're incredibly good at eliminating any signs of their own presence. They can slip through empty fields in broad daylight and still go practically unseen - and unsensed," she added.

Kuwabara grinned. "Aha, so you're really gonna need me on this one, aren't you Urameshi?" he said with a laugh. "Never fear, I got so much sixth sense that I might as well have a seventh sense too!"

Botan cringed at his enthusiasm. "See, that's the other problem. The clan's _other_ distinct attribute is their incredibly keen sense of smell. Their olfactory sense is especially attuned to sniffing out human presence - up to _miles_ away from their own location."

"So wait, doesn't that rule me out too?" asked Yusuke, a little confused.

"Not exactly," said Botan. "Technically, you've already died, and though your body is human your soul is not. As far as a demon's concerned, you don't smell like a true human ought to."

"So I need to go in 'cause I've got the spirit awareness - "

"But only I can go in, because you smell bad," Yusuke finished with a snigger. Kuwabara punched him in the arm and pouted. "How's this supposed to work?"

Botan reached into her pocket and started to tug something out. "Well...this is where the 'stupid' part kicks in."


	2. Chapter 2

(I actually have no real author's note. I just have to make a formal statement: Kuwabara is the cutest thing in the whole damn world.)

**Headspace, pt 2**

Yusuke eyed the objects sitting in Botan's hand warily. They looked weird. They looked stupid.

"They look like big purple cockroaches."

What he said.

There were exactly two of them, and each was an oblong shape about the size of the pad of Yusuke's thumb. They were a sick color of purple that reminded Yusuke way too much of his previous case, except for a small spot on each - one had a red cyclops eye, the other a yellow one. And to complete the weird buggy image, each had four needle-thin "legs" sticking out from underneath it, curled under as though they'd eventually grip something.

Yusuke was unimpressed. "Uh, Botan, don't you think I've kinda graduated beyond the 'gadgets' level by now?"

"Not for this case, you haven't," said Botan. "Your own skills won't be enough to get over this particular hurdle, I'm afraid."

"Well what the hell do they _do_?"

"If everything goes right, these pods will allow the two of you to communicate across the dimensional barrier via your brainwaves. That way, Yusuke, you can tap into Kuwabara's knowledge or skills at any time - and that includes his spiritual awareness."

"Hey, whaddya mean, if everything goes right?" asked Kuwabara, hesitant.

"Well...this is kind of experimental technology. It hasn't failed yet in laboratory testing, but it's never been put into a field situation where matters of life and death have been riding on it."

"So basically it's not gonna melt my brain by itself or anything, but there's not a money-back guarantee," said Yusuke.

"Bingo."

"So wait, does that mean this big idiot here is gonna be able to read my thoughts?"

"Not one hundred percent," Botan assured him, but it wasn't very reassuring. "It's remarkably easy to adjust to the device and its capabilities, and once you do that, you shouldn't have any problem putting up a sort of mental wall to hide away all your dark, private fantasies." Botan sniggered at her own joke. Yusuke didn't think it was very funny. Kuwabara started laughing, too.

"Yeah, I'd hate to be subjected to visions of perfect princess Yukina," Yusuke shot back. "I might be sick." That shut Kuwabara up rather quickly, and internally, Yusuke smiled.

"So what do we do with 'em?" said the scowling Kuwabara.

"When you're ready to use it, just hook it over your left ear," said Botan. "The pod will take it from there. A word of warning, though, they have to synch to one another, so you'd better make sure you put them on at the exact same time. Otherwise there'll be a sort of delay, and you'll be getting thoughts that are a few seconds old."

"And when are you shipping me off to happy fun poison land?"

"As soon as possible, if you don't mind. Lots of lives are at stake."

"Lots of _demon_ lives," Yusuke grumbled, but he didn't argue with it. "Might as well do it now before I change my mind."

"I'll give you two a minute to work this out, then," said Botan, placing the yellow-eyed one in Yusuke's hand and giving the red one to Kuwabara. "When they first activate themselves, the change can be...overwhelming. It helps to not have a lot of added stimuli."

"Then get out of here already," muttered Yusuke with a glare.

Botan left, and Yusuke and Kuwabara were alone again.

Yusuke didn't know how he felt about this whole thing. Sharing brainwaves with Kuwabara? He still wasn't quite used to swapping saliva all the time. He was having a hard time seeing this as anything but an intense invasion of privacy. Not to mention the whole _experimental technology_ thing. What was he now, Koenma's guinea pig? The only thing that almost reassured him was that Kuwabara looked just as nervous.

"As much as I was looking forward to picking up where we left off - "

"Go do this, Urameshi," said Kuwabara with a nod. Yusuke nodded too, and then, making sure their movements were aligned, the two of them lifted the purple cockroach pods to their ears.

"For the record, I don't really have any princess Yukina fantasies," said Kuwabara. "Not any more."

"Good to know," said Yusuke, and then the thing's little legs shot out and clamped _hard_ onto his cartilage.

"Ow! Son of a bitch, did that go all the way through?"

"I think so!" cried Kuwabara. "I didn't really wanna get my ear pierced!"

But they didn't have a lot of time to focus on the pain or the unexpected body-mod. The one on the side of Kuwabara's head started glowing red, and next to Yusuke's temple he felt his own heat up a little and start shining yellow. They seemed to detect each other, and align their lights in a beam of orange, and Yusuke was opening his mouth to comment on how crappy this case was already turning out to be when quite suddenly, he was not alone in his own head.

_I've been here a while, Shizuru's probably wondering when I'm coming home. Man I was pissed about that detention. Urameshi's pretty hot when he's angry. My ear still hurts. Is his mom still downstairs? Oh, Botan's gonna come back soon. Wait, that's weird. Urameshi's looking at me funny. Urameshi can hear me. __**Urameshi can hear me.**_

"Ahh!" Kuwabara yelped out loud, and Yusuke was inclined to agree with him. He was getting Kuwabara's constant stream of thought almost just as loudly as his own - and that included all the info he was getting from his five (no, make that _six_) senses. He had to close his eyes and prop himself against his wall to keep from keeling over. Kuwabara didn't think quite that fast - Yusuke _felt_ him not think that fast! - and sat down hard on the floor.

In the cacophony inside his brain, Yusuke scrambled to pick his own thoughts out from the mess. The more he probed for them, the easier it was to distinguish - somehow, some way, the only word Yusuke could use to describe his own thought processes was that they were _colder_. And after a minute or so, he figured out that he could freeze some of them as hard as ice and build a big wall, like an igloo or something, out of mundane things like _the sky is blue_ or _I could use a shower_. The other thoughts that weren't so mundane, the constant streaming of more sensory and emotional things, he corralled back behind the wall until their two minds were separate again.

Then, very carefully, he opened his eyes, and inside his brain he removed half a brick and looked out through the hole.

_Hey, Kuwabara,_ he ventured.

Kuwabara's eyes shot open, too, and mentally Yusuke could feel out his wall too, which actually kind of seemed more like a really thick curtain instead of Yusuke's igloo. _...Urameshi?_

Well who else would it be? thought Yusuke, and both inside and out, the two of them smiled.

A knock sounded on Yusuke's door and they both turned to look, moving almost as one. "Is everything all right in there?"

Kuwabara stood up from the floor, and Yusuke called back, "Yeah, I think we've got it under control now."

Botan stuck her head back in, then followed all the way through when she was sure the coast was clear. "I heard some shouting..."

"You could have warned us that these things were gonna punch us a couple new holes!" complained Kuwabara.

"I would have if I had known!" she insisted. "All I know about these things is from lab reports and eyewitnesses, I've never actually seen them in action myself."

"Well next time, remember to ask," said Yusuke pointedly. His ear still stung from the two tiny punctures, and faintly, like a thin breeze coming from behind that thick curtain, he could feel that Kuwabara's did too.

"If you're done complaining, Yusuke, we really ought to be leaving," she said. Reluctantly, Yusuke reached for his uniform jacket and tugged it back on. There was no point in messing up his real clothes. With Botan standing in the doorway, there wasn't exactly room for heartfelt goodbyes, but Kuwabara got a word in edgewise anyway.

_Don't die, asshole,_ he thought to Yusuke, and Yusuke smirked a little, even with Botan watching.

_Ch. Like that's ever stopped me._

-xxx-

If Yusuke hadn't had Kuwabara to mentally vent to, the walk to the portal downtown would have been painfully long and _seriously_ annoying. It was bad enough as it was.

_She is so freakin' annoying,_ he informed Kuwabara, and got nothing but a wave of amusement in response. _Oh, thanks. I'm glad to know my pain amuses you._

"How is your connection working out?" Botan pressed for about the third time. "I'm very curious about this, it must be quite fascinating."

"Not really," Yusuke maintained. "It's like if you stuck vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream in a bowl together and they started to melt, and there was part of it that was all running together but you still kinda had the one scoop and the other scoop."

"What a _sweet_ analogy." She grinned at him, and he scowled.

_So. Freaking. Annoying._

"I'm just hungry," he said out loud.

"You and Kuwabara didn't go get a snack together after school, or something?"

"No," said Yusuke, "why would we?"

"Oh, no reason I suppose," she said. "I just feel like I've barely seen one of you without the other since your last case."

Yusuke nearly missed a step in his walking, and he was certain that his nauseated wave of panic slipped around his igloo wall and over to Kuwabara's half of the ice cream. "So? We do kind of go to the same school you know."

_What is it, Urameshi?_ Kuwabara demanded mentally, confused by Yusuke's anxiousness, but he didn't respond immediately. He needed to feel out Botan first.

"Well, yes, but you're not in the same class, and you've both got other friends... It just seems to me you've been spending an awful lot of time together."

"Maybe we've got a lot of stuff to do that doesn't involve anybody else," said Yusuke, defensive. And the way he phrased that, it wasn't even really lying.

"If it's spirit detective stuff, there _are_ other people that are in the know now," she pointed out. But when Yusuke stopped responding, she mostly gave up. "Oh well. I suppose it's no big deal."

But it was. It was definitely a big deal. It was all Yusuke could do to keep following behind her, especially with the frantic thoughts of Kuwabara resounding in his head. _What's going on? What's wrong? What happened?_

_I think Botan might __**know**__._

Kuwabara didn't have to ask what he meant. The thought's implications had traveled to him right along with the thought itself. Yusuke tried to fortify his wall with _Botan's shoes are ugly_ and _That cloud looks like Hiei_ to brace himself for what was inevitably coming next.

But Kuwabara surprised him and gave the opposite reaction: he just flat-out didn't know what to say.

_Oh._

Yeah, _**oh**__,_ thought Yusuke. If Botan knew - if Botan _knew_... well, Yusuke couldn't think of too many people that were worse at keeping secrets than Botan. If she were the first one to figure it out, everyone else wouldn't be far behind. Yusuke could already see people's reactions in his half of his head: ostracization at school, Kurama's silent scorn and Hiei's incessant derision, Keiko's teary-eyed confusion...

Behind the curtain, he started to feel Kuwabara's thoughts milling around too, rustling quietly like a bunch of honeybees on mute, but he knew better than to push it. Kuwabara did stupid shit when he got emotional.

"Hello? Earth to Yusuke?"

And besides, they were here.

Crawling back out of his head, Yusuke eyed their surroundings skeptically. "Hey, I've been here before."

"You have, yes," said Botan. They were in the basement of a run-down building downtown, where Yusuke once before had crossed over into other realms, on a case a long time ago.

"So the portal that was here before is still here?"

"Well...not quite."

"Wha--?"

And before he had a chance to react, Botan had whipped up the carpet on the floor to reveal exactly one tile's worth of empty space in which he had to fit. With two hands heavy on his shoulders, she crammed him down into the narrow space, scraping holes in the sleeves of his jacket as his arms and shoulders barely fit. On the other side, he landed with a thump in something that almost felt like swamp. The amount of mud that was caked to his pants when he managed to stand up assured that they were equally ruined.

_Yuck,_ Kuwabara commented.

Yusuke frowned, inside and out. _You can feel that?_

A little. You were extra grossed out.

This thing is so weird, Kuwabara.

Tell me about it, he agreed. _I think it got cranked up a little harder now that you're in demon-land, too._

They were avoiding the subject, thinking about mundane stuff like Yusuke's mud-soaked pants. If they had been talking out loud with voices it would have been so much easier, but inside their heads, with the ice cream/igloo/curtain thing, it wasn't so easy to ignore.

_I think she __**knows**__,_ Yusuke thought again, unable to skirt it any longer.

_Yeah,_ thought Kuwabara, _yeah, she might._

What are we gonna do?

Kuwabara's mind remained silent, but Yusuke felt the curtain rustling again, little waves of uncertainty. _Well, actually, I think Sis might have figured it out a couple days ago._

Yusuke balked. _What!?_

You know how hard it is for me to keep secrets from her, Urameshi, thought Kuwabara, apologetically. _She's even better at this awareness thing than I am. There was no way it was gonna stay completely on the down-low._

She's not telling anyone, is she? Yusuke demanded.

Kuwabara hesitated a little, and when his answer came, it was almost...well, even sharing the headspace Yusuke couldn't really figure out what it was. Kuwabara was good at this. _No, she's not._

Yusuke tried to poke at the curtain - he was _extra_ curious to find out what the hell _that_ meant - but before he managed to accomplish anything, his whole head started pounding like it was inside a police siren.

_Get down, Urameshi!_ cried Kuwabara's mental voice. _**Now!**_


	3. Chapter 3

(A/N: Sorry for the delay on this! I had sorority initiation, a midterm, and a pretty nasty cold distracting me from my true calling: writing about these silly fags. Stay tuned for the riveting conclusion in part 4!)

**Headspace, pt 3**

_Get down, Urameshi!_ cried Kuwabara's mental voice. _**Now!**_

Hesitant as he was about more close contact with the swamp mud, the urgency in Kuwabara's mental voice was almost like a physical force, and he flopped onto his stomach hard and fast. No sooner had his head landed level with his feet than a huge swarm of demon crows fluttered through the space where he'd been standing a moment before. They looked bloodthirsty, but stupid, and they missed him entirely where he lay concealed by the almost knee-high swamp grass.

Once they'd passed, Yusuke hauled himself out of the mud with a thick, disgusting _slurp_ sound. _Uh, thanks for that, I guess,_ he told Kuwabara.

_What were they?_ Kuwabara asked.

_Just a bunch of creepy birds._

Oh, thought Kuwabara. _They seemed more uh...bad than that._

They still probably would have taken my head off, so it's all good, Yusuke assured him.

_I just can't see anything over there, so I don't know whether things are nasty or just stupid._

Yusuke thought about this. _Maybe we could work it so that you can kinda see what I'm seeing. We'd need to figure out how you could turn it on and off, though, to make sure that like..._

Yeah, Kuwabara agreed. _Okay, so I'm walking home from your place now, and once I get back to my room, we'll figure this thing out for good._

Good.

And so now that Yusuke had escaped from both the crazed crows and the seriously gross mud, he was able to stop and get a clear look at his surroundings for the first time. He was definitely in a swamp, but it looked to be around the edges of a swamp, and he felt like if he walked back in the direction the birds had come from he would get into gloomy weed fields and creepy forests that weren't swampy at all. Botan hadn't said anything about these demons being swamp creatures, so he decided maybe he'd start walking that way, trying to feel out where these things were.

Not that he could really do that without Kuwabara's help, of course. Botan had said specifically that these things were really sneaky - that was the whole reason he and Kuwabara were linked up with these cockroach pod things anyway. All he knew was he was looking for a twin brother and sister, probably both ugly, with a giant poisonous tooth. And that really wasn't much to go on.

It didn't help that he was still distracted about certain people learning certain pieces of information. Shizuru was one thing - he knew she'd probably keep pretty quiet, especially if it was something so important to her brother. But Botan...well, they still didn't know for sure if Botan knew or not, so he was just gonna keep holding onto the hope that she didn't, and maybe...

_What's gettin' so frosty over there, Urameshi?_ asked Kuwabara, poking faintly at Yusuke's wall.

_Nothing,_ Yusuke insisted, _I'm just thinking._

I can tell that much, duh, thought Kuwabara. _You seem kinda...uncomfortable._

My pants are covered in mud, of course I'm uncomfortable! thought Yusuke.

_Nah, we both know that's not what it is,_ thought Kuwabara. _But I can't really figure it out, so I'm just gonna leave you alone, I guess._

Thanks for that.

I just wish we weren't keepin' so many secrets.

Kuwabara stopped thinking at him, and Yusuke turned his attention back to the task at hand, because he was just approaching the forest line. The trees here were extra-weird, even for trees he'd seen in the demon world before - the branches looked more like giant spider legs, and when the wind blew toward them, they didn't rustle like trees were supposed to. And every set of two leaves could easily have been a little tiny mouth, ready to snap at anything that came near it.

Needless to say, Yusuke didn't go near any of them if he could help it.

Treading carefully, Yusuke walked down the thin, meandering path that someone seemed to have actually carved into the forest pretty recently. The area really didn't look like anyone had set foot in in for a long time.

Anyone but _him_.

"Kurama!" Yusuke cried, darting toward him. The demon was seated on a tree stump in the very heart of the forested area, a striking spot of red in the middle of the gloom. Extending from him in nearly every direction were wire-thin little vines, with thorns so small that when Yusuke bumped against one at one point it almost felt like sandpaper.

_Kurama?_ thought Kuwabara, confused.

_Yeah, I guess this is that demon forest where the bird tooth thing is supposed to be._

"Hello, Yusuke," Kurama said as he crossed to him. Now that Yusuke was closer, he could see how absolutely drained Kurama was. His face looked exhausted and his voice came out weakly.

"What's going on here, Kurama? You look like shit."

"An accurate representation of how I feel, then," said Kurama with a faint smile. "No matter, you're here now, so it ought to be done soon."

"What the hell's going on?"

"Well, I've been keeping this entire forest under control for about two days now," he said. "It wasn't so bad at first, but I'm starting to run out of energy. Those trees are worse than they look."

Yusuke swallowed, and made a face. They looked pretty bad as it was.

"Geez, well then what am I standing here talking to you for? I need to go get that thing!"

"Yes, that would probably be a good idea," Kurama agreed. "The last I knew of Jikou and Kouji, they were headed relatively southwest." He gestured weakly beyond the trees, further away from the swamplands. "There's not a whole lot of tree cover that way, so you should have an easier time catching them...but you'll need to act fast."

"No shit I need to act fast, I don't want you keeling over dead on me," said Yusuke.

"I will be fine, Yusuke, don't worry about me." He chuckled a bit. "And tell Kuwabara I say hello."

Yusuke started, confused, and then reached up to his ear, where the purple device was still hooked on tightly, emitting the faintest heat. "Yeah, I think he hears ya."

With a smile, Yusuke took off in the direction that Kurama had sent him in.

_Gosh, he seems pretty beat,_ thought Kuwabara.

_That's why we gotta get on top of this shit right away,_ thought Yusuke. _Let's see if we can figure out this eyes and ears thing._

Actually, I was messin' with it while you were talking to Kurama, thought Kuwabara. _I think I've almost got it figured out._

Yusuke blinked, and Kuwabara mentally chuckled at his little spark of surprise. _Oh._

_Yeah, I guess you better start paying more attention, Urameshi._

Now that Yusuke actually _was_ paying attention, he could definitely feel where Kuwabara's senses were encroaching on his own. When he looked straight ahead, he could barely tell at all, but every time his head turned or his eyes moved, little trails of gold-orange light would follow, the same color as Kuwabara's spirit sword. It was a color Yusuke had come to associate with his energy.

And then suddenly, Yusuke could _feel_ in his mind what he had to do to fine-tune it. He shifted his wall around a little - _Kurama's over there, my pants are covered in mud_ - and then the after-images were reduced significantly, just the faintest, wispiest streaks of gold, and only if he moved too fast.

_Ahh, whoa!_ Kuwabara exclaimed. _Now we're talkin'!_

_I gotta admit, Kuwabara, this is pretty freakin' weird,_ thought Yusuke.

_Don't worry. As soon as we're done trackin' these punks, I know I can pull it back._

You better be able to. Some things you just don't need to see.

Oh yeah, like what? asked Kuwabara. Yusuke's ice wall shifted and cracked a little, and Kuwabara just laughed.

-xxx-

It took an hour to find the trail.

And then Kuwabara lost it again, because he got a phone call from Ookubo.

They found it again in another thirty minutes.

But then Kuwabara got interrupted with a conversation with his sister.

_Come on, you retard,_ thought Yusuke. _We're kind of on a time crunch here?!_

I'm sorry, Urameshi! thought Kuwabara. _It's easy to get distracted when I'm not right there in the heat of it._

Well how do you even know we're going in the right direction at all?

Hey, whaddya mean, of course we are!

You sure? You might be twice as spiritually aware as the next guy, but you're not a freakin' psychic!

Damnit, Urameshi - but his thought ended there, because Kuwabara's sixth sense tingled so hard the chill went down _Yusuke's_ spine. _They're here!_

Yusuke scanned the area with his eyes and ears. It was a field of dirt with a few scraggly patches of weeds here and there, weeds the red-brown color of dried blood. The sky was overcast, tinting everything greyer, but it was really obvious to Yusuke's senses that the field was empty. Apparently, Kuwabara's senses were indicating otherwise.

_Turn back to your left,_ he instructed. _No - shit - I meant right - now they're back behind you - those weeds, __**there**__!_

Yusuke stopped in his scanning staring dead-on at a clump of tall razor grass about fifteen feet away. He still couldn't see anything.

_They must know I'm here,_ thought Yusuke.

_Yeah, I think they do,_ Kuwabara agreed. _Maybe they don't consider you a threat or nothin'._

Hey now.

Kuwabara's curtain rustled a little; he appeared to be strategizing, which was not one of his strong points. _How close do you think you can get?_

To this very threatening pile of weeds? Gee, I dunno.

They're _**there**__, Urameshi. You're kinda blind, you know?_ The curtain rustled a bit harder, and then a waft of warm air seemed to come from behind it, whisking over to melt a little bit of Yusuke's wall. _Here...maybe this'll work._

Yusuke didn't know what Kuwabara was trying to do, but suddenly, there was a bit of a tingle behind his eyeballs, and that tingle seemed to be telling him something. He squinted his eyes narrower, pulling the Kuwabara-colored glow into his line of vision again, and then...

_Shit!_

The places where he had to look directly through the gold-orange, Yusuke could _see them_. They were strange-looking like every other demon he'd encountered - dark green skin and pale, pale silver hair and eyes. And Yusuke knew they were supposed to be a girl and a guy, but even at this distance, he couldn't tell them apart. They had the exact same small ponytail set at the backs of their skulls and very similar outfits (or at least what he could see of them, over the waist-high patch of weeds).

_Okay, I know they're twins, but this is ridiculous,_ thought Yusuke, shuddering internally.

_No kidding,_ thought Kuwabara. _Which one's the chick?_

Hell if I know, Yusuke answered. _Can you tell where the freaky tooth thing is?_

He felt Kuwabara concentrating on them. _Uh, yeah. It's in a little bag thing that the...one on the left has hooked to uh, its belt. I guess that keeps it from infecting the two of them._

Guess so. Yusuke scowled at the creepy twins and cracked his knuckles. _All right, let's get this over with._

Yusuke charged straight at them.

The stampeding of his feet seemed to catch their attention when he was about two feet from them. And by then, it was much too late. The one with the pouch at its waist took a hard blow to the jaw with an _oof!_ that was just as much surprise as it was pain. It barely had time to recover and regroup before Yusuke was kicking the other one in the stomach. He bounced back solidly.

"Okay, assholes, give up the swan tooth and we can just call it a day," he told them, grinning at their startled faces.

"Brother, what is this monstrosity?" asked the one without the pouch. So that must be the girl one. It definitely did not look like a chick.

"I don't know, sister," said the other, "but it may be the one they call Spirit Detective..."

"That's right, punks. Look, don't make this harder than it needs to be. The swan tooth. Now."

"Never!" hissed the sister. "We must have our revenge!" She looked at her brother in a creepy way that was almost...loving? And not in the brother-sister way, either.

"Yes, dear sister, that's right," he agreed, returning the look.

_Ewewewew__**ew**__!_ ran Kuwabara's disgusted thoughts through Yusuke's head. _Sorry Urameshi, but you just don't understand how __**gross**__ that is until you have a sister..._

I'll bet, thought Yusuke with a shudder. But he refocused his attention on the creeps. "Then I guess I'll have to take it by force!" His right index finger started charging with energy. He was _so_ done with this already.

The siblings exchanged an eerie grin, and then both stared at him head on.

"_Try us._"

The words slipped out of their mouths so softly that Yusuke was not prepared for the attack that came next - a rush of ridiculous speed! Then, needle-sharp lacerations down both sides of his body from their long, feline claws. He knew he was bleeding, and that his school jacket was getting even more torn up. He tried to lash out and catch one or the other of them as they danced around him, but although they weren't strong, they were just too fast. Even Hiei and his speediness probably wouldn't quite give these two any competition.

Then, just as quickly as they'd started, they stopped, and Yusuke realized belatedly that Jikou had him in a pretty solid armlock. She called to her brother.

"The tooth's power! The poison! Infect him with it!"

"Yes, sister!" cried Kouji. "We can't let him get in our way now!" Grabbing the pouch at its base, he tugged loose the drawstring with one hand and then tilted the opening toward Yusuke, making sure no part of himself came in contact with what was inside.

Yusuke struggled free of the hold and tried to bolt away, but it was too late. A blast of foggy air, tinted with a green so dark it was almost black, shot out of the pouch and hit him directly in the stomach, seeping into the dozens of tiny slices that the twins' claws had made in his body. It felt like acid. Yusuke screamed in pain.

"You'll not stand in the way of our vengeance, Spirit Detective!" Jikou swore, and then the two of them vanished again.

Yusuke could barely stand up, much less stumble forward. His head was spinning with the pain and the disorientation that came with the poison. What he really needed to do, he decided, was sit down. Just take a nice nap...and when he woke up, it wouldn't hurt any more...

_No!_ insisted a fuzzy little voice in the back of his head. _Damnit, Urameshi, if you sit down and go to sleep now, there won't __**be**__ a waking up!_

_Shut up, little voice,_ Yusuke thought groggily. _What else'm I supposed to do?_

_I dunno, I dunno, you idiot, but __**don't die**__._ The voice sounded panicked, and Yusuke wondered why that was. It was almost like Keiko when she worried real hard about him, but...stupider. And not a girl. Then it cried, in a mental voice a little too loud for Yusuke's blurry state, _That's it!_

What, what? Yer givin' me a headache.

Kurama, said the voice. _You've got to get back to Kurama. He's not that far away. He may look like shit right now, but I just know he'll be able to make you some kinda antidote._ The voice got softer, more Keiko-y. _He'll have to._

If you say so, Yusuke told the voice. And as much as he wanted to just lie down and sleep, he felt like if he didn't do what the voice said, it'd be upset. And for some reason he really, really didn't want to make the voice upset. So, dragging his feet really hard and stopping six or seven times to clutch at his poisoned stomach in serious pain, Yusuke pulled his dying body back through the fields and into the twisted forest where Kurama sat on his tree stump. For some reason, he looked a lot better than before, but maybe that was just because Yusuke felt a _lot_ worse.

"H-hey, hey Kurama..." And that was it. Yusuke couldn't hold himself up on his feet any more, and he fell onto his face at the demon's feet.

"Oh no, Yusuke," murmured Kurama, anxious. "I was afraid this would happen. Listen, Yusuke? Can you hear me?"

"Mmmm."

"I've got an antidote I can give you," Kurama said, "but it will knock you out for about an hour. When you wake up you'll probably be very disoriented, but all right. Okay?"

"Suuuuure," said Yusuke, his voice fading to a weak crackle. "Do...do whatever you want."

"Swallow this, then." Kurama pressed a tiny parcel to his lips - some foul-tasting powder rolled inside a sweet leaf of some kind. "Hurry!"

It must have started working, because Yusuke was out cold.


	4. Chapter 4

(A/N: So the same thing happened to Headspace that happened to its predecessor: the last chapter got insanely long compared to the other ones. However, unlike its predecessor, what has happened here in Headspace is that I've fully merited an M rating. Eheheh. So here it is, the final installment! Thanks for reading!)

**Headspace, pt 4**

He was in Kuwabara's room.

Yusuke was okay with this.

He was sort of half-sitting, half-lying down, propped up on his elbows on Kuwabara's bed.

Yusuke was okay with this, too. He'd been there before.

And Kuwabara, of course, was hovering half-next to him, half-overtop of him, using his extra inches of height to his advantage, and kissing Yusuke pretty hard.

Yusuke was _definitely_ okay with this.

They pushed it to the limits of what it was. Kuwabara had that sliding subtlety sometimes, a trick his stupid hopeless romantic side must have honed just a little by kissing a couple girls before he got to Yusuke, something Yusuke didn't even bother with. He knew what he wanted and he _got it_, damnit, tongue blazing inside Kuwabara's mouth, and there was that spot over to the side that felt so damn good, and Yusuke could feel it when he pressed against it, and okay _that_ was weird. For a second there he felt like he was inside Kuwabara's head, kissing..._himself_.

He pulled back.

Kuwabara looked, as usual, very confused. "Whassa matter, Urameshi?" he said thickly.

Detached, Yusuke couldn't really feel it any more. He could barely remember what had happened to make him stop - it must have been a damn good reason to make him stop doing _that_. "Uh, it's nothing," he stammered. "Never mind." And he cupped Kuwabara's face toward his own again, and they continued. Thoroughly. To the point that it wasn't too long before Kuwabara was less-than-half-next to him and more-than-half-overtop of him, and then there weren't even fractions at all, just knees and hips and subtle creakings of the bed, and Yusuke's pants starting to feel uncomfortably small.

And somehow, because _his_ pants were too tight, this clearly meant the article of clothing he had to remove was Kuwabara's _jacket_.

He reached up, planning for the top button, but only made it to the one at the bottom. Yusuke decided this was better anyway. It was closer, for one - and for another, Kuwabara wore his damn jacket so long that Yusuke's heavy hands fumbling at the bottom button ended up extra close to the center of Kuwabara's heat and edginess, and every time his hands slipped too close to it he felt a jolt, just waiting for Yusuke to press closer, because what he needed most now was that crucial relief -

And there he was, inside Kuwabara's head again. _Both_ of them. Again Yusuke pulled away, freaked.

This time, however, Kuwabara misinterpreted it in the worst way possible. "Oh geez, Urameshi, I guess I should have - I mean if you didn't want to - crap, I'm such an idiot - "

"_No!_" Yusuke insisted. "You big dumbass, don't stop now..." He craned his neck up to kiss the big dumbass again, and it was slow and urgent at the same time, somehow, but Yusuke decided that he really liked it. And sooner or later, Kuwabara's jacket had come off, and that was when Yusuke noticed it.

Kuwabara's ears were purple.

Suddenly it all made sense.

"Your _ears_ are purple," he said, relieved.

Kuwabara chuckled at him, a little. "Oh, you..._oh_. Yeah, they are."

The clothes came off more easily after that. Every time Yusuke would fall into Kuwabara's brain, he'd just pause, wait for it to pass, and keep going. His shirt, his pants, Kuwabara's pants, and had they even been wearing shoes? It didn't matter once there weren't any fractions. Kuwabara's kisses were too subtle. Yusuke's extra-hard hard-on was not.

"_Ahhh,_" groaned Yusuke when the palm of Kuwabara's hand found it, and since Kuwabara's ears were purple, Yusuke felt it from both sides.

"Damnit...Urameshi..." came the muffled response from the crook of Yusuke's neck. "_Damnit_."

"Ah, _shit_, okay - " Yusuke managed, and his heavy hand crept back to the center of Kuwabara's heat and edginess, and as soon as he was reciprocating, they might as well have been one being, because Kuwabara's ears were purple, and Yusuke could feel everything. _Everything_.

And then Shizuru walked in.

Yusuke's one relief was that they both managed to get their hands _away_ from the goods before freaking out, and no death-grips ended up happening. He'd have felt it either way at this point. After making sure that was all okay, he was completely prepared to dive under the blankets and swear incessantly from embarrassment, but Kuwabara grabbed the top quilt, covered what needed to be covered, and stormed toward his sister.

"Damnit, Shizuru!" he yelled at her. She was mostly out in the hall, and Kuwabara had to stand in the doorway to speak to her. Yusuke could barely see her at all. "How many times have I told you not to come in here when Urameshi's over?"

"I'm _sorry_, bro, I heard screaming and I felt like I needed to make sure you guys weren't killing each other!"

"I know your awareness is better than that!" he insisted. "You couldn't..._tell_?!"

"Well geez, okay, next time I'll make sure to check if my baby brother is _having awkward teenage sex_ before I bust his door open!" she shot back with a growl.

"You do that!" said Kuwabara, and he slammed the door shut on her.

Yusuke watched the whole thing in shock and vague horror. The expression stayed on his face even as Kuwabara started crossing back toward him.

"I'm sorry, Urameshi, I'm so sorry," he kept saying. "I had no idea she was going to barge in here, are you still - I mean could we maybe still - "

"She _knows_," Yusuke said faintly. He closed his eyes - he couldn't believe this was happening.

"I...I had to tell her," he said. "I had to tell _somebody_. I'm just no good at keeping secrets, y'know? Especially from my sister - "

"You told her." The room was falling away from him now, and he felt something inside him plummet - a sinking feeling you usually get in the pit of your stomach, but that was hitting Yusuke in the back of his mind.

"She woulda figured it out anyway, don't you think? Geez, what is so wrong with this? _Damnit_, Urameshi!"

_**Damnit**__, Urameshi._

Yusuke woke up.

-xxx-

"Shit."

The assessment of the situation came to Yusuke fairly quickly. The knockout side effect of the poison's antidote had not only, well, knocked him out, but in his unconscious state he'd had a really weird dream (which, embarrassingly, Kurama had probably heard bits and pieces of). It had seemed very real at the time - real enough that Yusuke's real-world pants felt a little snug for reasons other than drying mud - but now that he was awake its artificiality seemed painfully obvious. And the more Yusuke thought about it...

The more it wasn't just _his_ dream.

_...Kuwabara?_ he ventured. _Are you awake too? Were you asleep too?_

Yes...and yes, came his answer. _That dream was...freakin' weird._

I'll say, thought Yusuke. He gulped, behind his newly constructed wall of ice. _You...have that kinda dream much?_

Kuwabara's curtain wafted with what was definitely a sigh of defeat. _Yeah, Urameshi,_ he confessed. _Yeah I do._

Yusuke puffed out a pretty big sigh himself and swept his fingers back through his hair, making sure most of it was still in place. This was _so_ not the time or the place to be dealing with this. Damn purple bug pod...things. Why did the freaky _Botan gadget_ for this case have to be the one thing that messed with him and Kuwabara so hard?

He didn't know how he felt about that dream. Behind his wall, Yusuke figured he probably should have assumed that Kuwabara's dirty mind was leaning that direction. His own kind of was, too. But that didn't make it any less _gay_. If Yusuke went that far...well, the further he went, the harder it got to write it off later if things didn't work out. And that was what screwed with his head the most: dream-Kuwabara had seemed perfectly okay with the fact that his sister knew everything about them, and didn't bother trying to cover it up or convince her otherwise. He actually seemed...pretty _happy_ about telling people.

A single sentence from earlier came back to Yusuke, almost as if Kuwabara's mental voice were consciously repeating it: _I just wish we weren't keepin' so many secrets._

You...you _**want**__ to tell,_ Yusuke finally realized.

_Yeah, so what if I do?_ thought Kuwabara. _Face it, Urameshi, both of us are kinda too hot on each other to keep acting like nothin's happening._

I...but... Thoughts were flitting through Yusuke's mind too incoherently for him to send a concrete message to Kuwabara's curtain.

_Look...this thing, with you, it makes me like...really happy. Singing in the shower happy. Smiling even when I'm getting my ass kicked happy._

...Shouting it to the world happy, added Yusuke.

_Exactly._

Yusuke's wall crackled. _No offense, Kuwabara, but this is all happening at like, the shittiest time ever._

I know, he thought.

_So you think maybe we can go kick some demon ass, and __**then**__ I can get back to you on the whole happiness deal?_

Kuwabara laughed a little, behind his curtain. _Sure, Urameshi. It is kinda what we do best._

It totally is.

Scratching his head again, Yusuke rolled his neck a little and then rose to his feet. Kuwabara's senses were leaking into his again, and he could feel the faintest of trails from the creepazoid twins heading far off to the right. He was about to sprint off and follow it when something occurred to him.

"...Sorry about all of this, Kurama," he mumbled.

The demon gave him a weak smile. "At least it kept me assured that you hadn't died."

-xxx-

_So I'm guessing they're kind of expecting me this time._

Yeah, pretty much, thought Kuwabara. _You gotta be a little sneakier now._

Damnit, thought Yusuke, _I should have asked Kurama if he had some kinda smelly plant that would cover up my scent._

Kuwabara's curtain ruffled with a gust of uncertainty. _Nah, the way Botan talked about it, they're good enough that they could pick you out from behind the flowers or whatever._

These guys suck, thought Yusuke.

_Yeah, no kidding._

Yusuke kept running, following the trail of Kouji and Jikou. He ran, and ran, and ran, and then suddenly stopped running - because _they_ stopped running.

_I'm...kinda gaining on them?_

Maybe! thought Kuwabara, excited. _Geez, please can we just get this over with. All right, Urameshi, what's your plan this time?_

I figure if I wrap around them - if they're not moving - I can get up in a tree in this next patch of forest and..ambush them from above?

Kuwabara's curtain couldn't contain his mental wince. _Yeah, that'd be great if that actually __**was**__ a patch of forest, but look harder! Geez, you're blind..._

Yusuke looked harder...and it wasn't forest at all. It was a spread of little huts and houses, taking up a good chunk of the horizon, all of them about the same height with thatched roofs and elaborate markings in brown and black on the outside walls, almost like war paint.

_You don't think it's...!!_

It must be, thought Kuwabara. _That village they're going to attack._

Okay, so I get there, hide out on the first roof I reach, and jump them before they get close enough to use that poison tooth thing, Yusuke revised. _Still no big deal, right?_

Kuwabara thought about it. _I guess there really isn't somethin' better to do._

So, making sure to give the twins a wide berth, Yusuke dashed off again, running in a broad arc around a small copse of (probably poisonous) berry bushes and then back toward the demon village, where he crept onto the roof closest to the edge and waited.

And waited some more. And tried not to think about Kuwabara, but failed, and indeed barely managed to keep it inside his igloo wall. And just when he didn't think Kouji and Jikou were actually going to show up, they appeared almost instantaneously, their speed still impressing him.

He leapt from the house and kicked Kouji (or at least, he thought) solidly in the face.

"We poisoned you, yet you live!" shrieked Jikou, proving him right. "How?"

Yusuke turned to face her and rose up to his full height. "See, lady, the thing you gotta know about me is that I've gotten pretty good at dying over and over again and yet not ending up dead." He smiled at her, then at both of them as Kouji rose from the ground and stood way too close beside her.

_Keep your guard up, Urameshi,_ Kuwabara warned.

_What are you, Grandma?_

"Leave the fool boy," Kouji said to his sister. "We're too close to our goal now to be hindered by this insect." She nodded, and they geared up to invade the village, when Yusuke came flying at them from behind and elbowed Jikou in the spine.

"I don't think so!" he said. "I did not come all the way out here, land in the mud, get this cockroach thing attached to my ear and nearly _die_ just for you guys to go through with this!"

Kouji and Jikou tensed, looked at the purple device clamped onto Yusuke's left ear, and then looked at each other and grinned. Kuwabara and Yusuke's thoughts were one:

_Oh shit._

She came at him first, with her lightning speed and her razor-sharp claws. Yusuke yelped and rolled right and Jikou blitzed past him, but this only seemed to put him right in Kouji's path, and he had to hit the ground hard to dodge again. He was flailing all over the place, and the demons didn't seem to be breaking a sweat.

_Damnit, Kuwabara, how come you got two helpings of sixth sense and I didn't get any?!_ he screamed inside his head. _If anything happens to this purple thing I'm toast!_

Yeah, well if my instincts are so important then keep usin' 'em! Kuwabara shot back. _They're all that's saving your ass now, stupid!_

Kuwabara was right. Every insanely necessary dodge Yusuke managed to make was a direct result of Kuwabara's awareness at the edge of his consciousness, letting him anticipate moves mere seconds quicker, enough to let him get out of the way. Jikou flew over his head; Kouji stabbed the air where his stomach had been seconds before. But the more they moved, the more Yusuke started to employ the strategies of another of his friends: Kurama's technique of analyzing the enemy's pattern of attack to render it more predictable and easier to defend against.

And the more Yusuke thought about it, the more he realized he didn't even really have to defend. He just had to steal.

His eyes - Kuwabara's eyes, really - focused on the pouch at Kouji's waist. If he could just snatch it away, he could turn the poison on its current owners, off them nice and quick, and then put the Great Swan's Tooth back where it belonged and _go home_. He just had to anticipate. He had to use himself _and_ Kuwabara. Kouji swept past him on the left - Kouji faked right, then darted downward - Kouji was going to come at him from high and to the right -

And Jikou, whom he'd completely forgotten about, sliced past him from behind and cut the purple sensor from his ear, shattering it.

Yusuke's head _throbbed_. The sound rang in his ear like it had been twenty times louder, and then he started to panic. Without Kuwabara metaphorically whispering in his ear, this fight was going to be impossible. The case would end in disaster with thousands dead, and one of those thousands would probably be Yusuke.

"Damn! Brother, this device does not seem to be a weak point after all." Jikou came to rest standing next to her brother, huddling into his chest.

"Do not worry, sister. It was a valiant effort, and we will beat him." He, in turn, stroked her hair.

Yusuke blinked. Why could he still see them, even with the purple pod broken?

_Urameshi? Dude, they're just standing there! Fight them!_

Oh my god, Kuwabara was _still in his head._

"Okay, that is _it_! This is officially the weirdest fucking case _ever_! But I'll be damned if I let some creepy _incest demons_ get in the way of me going home, taking a shower, and getting back to my _boyfriend_!" And before he knew it, Yusuke was charging at the twins.

And he was _faster_.

He elbowed Jikou in her cheekbone and punched her brother in his jaw. He followed through with the swipe at Kouji to reach down and snatch the pouch away from his belt. Then he kicked him back toward his sister so they were lined up back-to-front. Yusuke's image of them started to flicker at that point - Kuwabara was finally disconnecting from his brain, and he was losing his sixth sense - so he did what he had to do as quickly as possible, before they disappeared from his sight.

"_Spirit gun!_"

The bullet, still tinged with a hint of Kuwabara's gold, pierced through them both.

-xxx-

Yusuke made a face at himself in Kuwabara's bathroom mirror. His hair was messy and still mostly wet - he was going to have to wait for a while, and then ask Kuwabara where he kept his hair gel, because in the mess of Shizuru's cosmetics he sure as hell couldn't find it. Kuwabara had loaned him a change of pants, and though they were a little too long, they were pretty damn comfortable.

Stepping out of the bathroom door in a cloud of steam, Yusuke decided that most things about Kuwabara were pretty damn comfortable.

He was half falling asleep on his bed, so Yusuke threw his damp towel at him and hit him in the face. "Hey."

Kuwabara sat up and smiled at him. "Hey."

Yusuke crossed over and sat next to him on the bed, close enough where he could nudge at Kuwabara's foot with his own from time to time. "So you took yours off, too."

It took Kuwabara a moment to figure out what Yusuke had meant. "Oh. Yeah. It was kinda awkward, especially sleeping with it on. My ear still hurts."

"Yeah, about that..." Yusuke brushed back the hair from the top of his left ear, where instead of the purple device, there now sat a tiny silver ring, that circled through both the holes the pod had left.

"Whoa! Hey, where'd you get that?"

"I picked it up in the spirit world before Botan brought me back," Yusuke said. He turned from Kuwabara and grinned. "Whaddya think, does it make me more badass?"

"It kinda makes you more gay."

"Well I thought that's kinda the way we were playing it now."

The humor was gone, and Yusuke and Kuwabara kind of stared at each other. Kuwabara looked a little conflicted, and Yusuke found himself missing already the ability to just peer inside his head.

"I told Botan."

"You...you did what?"

"Yeah," said Yusuke, "that's right. I figure if anybody's got a problem with _this_ - " he scooted closer to Kuwabara, putting them flush hip-to-hip and resting his hand firmly on Kuwabara's thigh - "then they should reconsider who they've decided to have a problem with. It's just _their_ bad luck that the resident queers also happen to be the resident ass-kickers."

Kuwabara blinked at Yusuke, then looked down to his hand and blinked again. Slowly, as if he thought any minute now Yusuke would change his mind, he slipped his own hand overtop of Yusuke's. When Yusuke stayed, Kuwabara snapped, and tugged him down practically on top of him, Yusuke's wet hair shaking droplets everywhere. Then, of course, they were kissing. And somehow it felt...different. Like Kuwabara knew for the first time that everything was going to be okay.

At least, that's what it seemed like to Yusuke. He still couldn't be quite sure.

"Mmm, I miss being able to read your mind," he joked softly against Kuwabara's lips.

"Idiot," Kuwabara told him. "You're still _here_. And that means you still are."

There was only so long Yusuke could take that. "...Okay, _that_ kinda makes you gay," he said, laughing. "You use that line on all the boys?"

"Hey, shut up!" said Kuwabara. "It just kinda...came over me, okay?"

"Stupid hopeless romantic," said Yusuke, and went back to kissing him. It was the easiest way to shut him up. To Yusuke's surprise, though, it only lasted for a couple of heated seconds before Kuwabara jumped back up and headed toward the door.

"Hey, what gives?" said Yusuke. "We were gettin' to the good part!"

"I _know_," said Kuwabara, as he turned the lock on the door. "That's why we gotta keep Shizuru out."


End file.
